My book on women pianists has been chosen by the Financial Times as one of their Best Summer Books of 2024. Music critic Richard Fairman made it one of his choices. It's very gratifying to find the book being noticed by a wider circle - I suppose because of the...
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This weekend my book Women and the Piano is reviewed by Diane Cole in the Wall Street Journal. I don't think my books have ever come to the attention of the WSJ before, so I am delighted to be included. Only subscribers can read the full review, but this link at least...
A kind person in the US who subscribes to New Yorker magazine has alerted me to the fact that Women and the Piano is one of their selections in 'What We're Reading this Week - the best books out now, handpicked by our editors' (Subscriber newsletter, 8 May 2024) I...
Yesterday I signed a few books at the big Waterstones in Princes Street. For anyone outside the UK, Waterstones is a popular bookstore with branches nationwide and (in this case) a popular coffee shop on the top floor, with great views of Edinburgh Castle. Several...
The April 2024 issue of BBC Music magazine carries a short but sweet review of my book Women and the Piano. As the text is too indistinct to read in the photo, this is what it says: 'Revealed within the pages of this elegantly written book by pianist and author Susan...
We were discussing the fact that there are so few concert reviews in the newspaper these days. Time was when most concerts in prestigious venues were reviewed the next day. But now there are few reviews. What gets covered? - the Proms, perhaps, and some special visits...
My 2010 book Out of Silence has received a decade-late review in American Record Guide - in the nicest possible way. Their reviewer Bruno Repp had written a long article about lesser-known piano music he thought readers would enjoy discovering. He ended with this...
This week I've been trying to find out what happened to the album of Mozart piano and violin sonatas that the wonderful Viennese violinist Erich Höbarth and I made in 2012. (That's us in the photo.) It was compiled from live recordings of a concert series we performed...
The other day I read a review in The Guardian of a book, 'In Good Hands', by conductor Alice Farnham, about the art and craft of conducting. I haven't read the book, but I was struck by several phrases the reviewer, Caroline Crampton, used when talking about classical...
BBC Radio 3's 'Record Review' programme this morning contained a 'Building a Library' feature on the Ravel Trio. Reviewer Jeremy Sams, a well-known Francophile, compared the available recordings. Mentioning the enormous technical difficulty of all three instrumental...
Readers of my books might like to see a couple of mentions which have popped up recently in the US. The first is in the New York publication The Browser, whose mission is to send its subscribers a daily selection of good writing from around the world. Editor Robert...
Today I learned that my book The Piano - a History in 100 Pieces has been named as a Book of the Year 2021 in the Presto Music Awards. I feel very fortunate that it has now been chosen as a Book of the Year in The Spectator, the Financial Times and the Presto Music...
An exhilarating moment in an otherwise quiet stretch of autumn: Jenny Colgan has chosen my piano book as one of her Books of the Year in The Spectator (the print edition comes out on 13 November). She calls it 'one of the two most beautiful books I got my hands on...
Renowned piano teacher and educator Murray McLachlan has reviewed my book in International Piano: https://www.rhinegold.co.uk/international_piano/the-piano-a-history-in-100-pieces/ To read more reviews of this book, click here
The quarterly magazine Musical Opinion has a review of my book in its October-December 2021 issue. Some excerpts from Julian Jacobson's review: 'Susan Tomes' new book is aimed at the informed amateur or mélomane, in the untranslatable French word: the Radio 3 (perhaps...